News and notes from around the interweb: Google rolling out new hotel price discounting approach. It’s all a part of how Google could become your new travel agent. (HT: kalboz on Milepoint) Up to 15,000 Virgin Atlantic miles for Hilton stays An Air Europa Airbus A330 flew through a hail storm. Check out the damage. (HT: Kirby) Know everything about a credit, debit, or gift card based on its opening digits Fascinating data on Uber in Austin. Meanwhile Peter Thiel calls Uber the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley. Thiel just did a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’. You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for September 2014.
Pan Am Dining: it’s Become “a Thing” In Los Angeles, New York, and London
There’s been a bit of a stir over Air Hollywood’s Pan Am dining experience — eat dinner on board a replica of a Pan Am 747. A $200 ticket gets you a business class seat for cocktails, dinner, and a movie. And a $300 first class ticket gives you a first class seat for cocktails and the movie, and the upper deck dining room for your meal. Pricey, but very cool and probably worth it for a unique evening out experience if you’re in the Los Angeles area while it’s happening. Cocktails, dinner, and a movie in at a unique venue doesn’t come cheap. Here’s the site to buy tickets and the upcoming dates: What I find most interesting, though? These aren’t the only people dressing up as Pan Am crew and serving dinner!
DEAL: An Online Travel Site Is Letting You Book Free Roundtrip Airfare Right Now!
Extreme Hotel Deals outlines an opportunity to generate vouchers for free flights. Bravofly is a Swiss-based set of online booking sites. The Russian and Ukrainian versions of their site has a rewards program, Bravofriends, that will give you credit just for referring people — no purchase necessary. You’ll need Google translate to use the site unless your language skills are top-notch. Here’s Extreme Hotel Deals’ referral link, I’m not using my own. They outlined the deal and they deserve some props. It’s no cost to sign up using a referral link, feel free to leave yours in the comments so someone might use it. When you open an account you get a $30 voucher a roundtrip flight. Site site has a $20 service charge, so it’s a net of $10. Each friend who creates an…
Here’s an Airline That Shouldn’t Be Reborn
I’m too young to really remember Air Florida, although I know stories of Air Florida. Mostly I remember that Howard Stern went on the radio in DC ostensibly asking them for a one-way ticket from Washington National airport to the 14th Street Bridge, a day after the crash of Air Florida flight 90 caused by improper de-icing. After several failed resurrections of Pan Am and this summer’s rebirth of PeoplExpress, it seems like harkening back to the glory days is sort of “been there, done that.” And of all the names to resurrect… A return of Air Florida is now on the table. Air Florida is a privately-held start-up carrier, incorporated as a Florida Corporation In 2014. The company has filed for registration of all logos and indicia of the iconic carrier (Air Florida 1st,…
US Airways Changes its Booking Classes to Line Up With American
American Airlines posted a travel agent advisory about how it has updated fare class for US Airways. For tickets issued starting today for travel beginning on September 17, US Airways has worked to align its fare classes with American. US Airways is shrinking its economy fare buckets from 15 down to 12. T, U and R will no longer be US Airways economy fares. T, U, and R are ‘special classes’ on American. T is a coach award, U is a business class award, and — while I haven’t had occasion to search this recently — R has been a booking class for upgrades to business class on domestic 3-class flights and on two-cabin transborder flights. It strikes me as a little strange to see the US Airways ‘R’ bucket transition to ‘E’ because that…
Hopefully Southwest Didn’t Actually PAY for Their New Paint Job’s Design
Here’s the new Southwest livery. I’m not sure what was wrong with the old one. I don’t know anyone that buys airline tickets based on the paint job of the planes. I get that you need to paint planes when airlines merge, to put the right company name on them. And the composite materials of the Boeing 787 didn’t work with American’s old unpainted metal finish so they needed at least those planes which they hadn’t gotten yet to get a new paint job. Still, I’m a bit of a skeptic. That said, Mark F emails this photo, which looks to me like a British commuter rail train. Southwest is supposed to be more like a(n admittedly ‘fun’) bus in the sky, rather than a train. So I think they got the new Southwest livery…
A Simple Trick to Leverage Points With Icelandair
Icelandair is a bit of an enigma, several US flights to Iceland and beyond, not a terrible way to get to Europe and often inexpensive — and also offering the most service to an interesting destination. For a short while they had a partnership with Alaska Airlines which provided incredible value and drama, and dirt cheap first class awards to Hawaii. Mix a reasonable award chart for Alaska Airlines travel with selling miles for low, low prices and a feeding frenzy ensued. Alaska redemptions were pulled, and then brought back in early 2013. Unfortunately this partnership ended June 2013. Most US customers have had few realistic options for earning and redeeming miles when flying Icelandair. There is one way to make real use of otherwise-stranded Icelandair points, as SanDiego1K emails me. We flew to Iceland…
The Final Death of the Mileage Run
Josh Barro writes one of the best mainstream pieces on the current state of mileage runs for the New York Times. It’s a practice known as a mileage run: Buy a low-price airline ticket, in this instance $537, and fly not because you want to go anywhere, but to earn redeemable miles and progress toward elite status on your preferred airline. The core logic behind mileage runs is that airline points have a relatively fixed value, but the cost to accrue them can vary widely, so a low fare for a long trip can reap outsize rewards. Only when you’re taking a mileage run is connecting through Istanbul to get to Amsterdam better than flying there nonstop When the New York Times comes around to the party that mileage runs are dead… There are used…
If We Don’t Like American’s New Catering, They’ll Think Customers Are Telling Them They Don’t WANT Food
When the American and US Airways merger got the final go-ahead, I said there were ten things to expect. So far things are playing out pretty much… as expected. One of those things was the US Airways-ization of American. New leadership said that American’s service standards would survive But what that turns out to meean is a meeting in the middle for meal times — American was at about 2 hours, and US Airways at 3 hours 30 minutes so the new standard is 2 hours 45 minutes. But it’s US Airways’-style food. Yesterday was my first time flying on a meal route on a flight qualifying for food since new American meal standards went into effect September 1. Since I was on a meal flight it’s still catered with mixed nuts, but with a…
Al Jazeera Investigates: Their Hatchet Job on the Boeing 787
Al Jazeera aired a take down of the Boeing 787 — arguing that standards were altered to speed up production, and that this compromised safety. The piece strikes me as sensationalist tabloid journalism. I don’t see the benefit to Boeing to push out an aircraft that compromises safety. And clearly the airlines flying the aircraft every day are confident in its safety. It’s an impressive aircraft. While I think the Al Jazeera show is unfair to say the least, and includes a ton of non-sequiturs like somehow working with partner companies to share the cost of production and develop different elements of the aircraft (this is also called ‘division of labor’) as though this inherently leads to less quality — as opposed to relying only on one’s own more limited expertise — it’s a show…
